Indian doubles tennis has been at its healthy best this season. It is not just because Rohan Bopanna has been playing phenomenal tennis at 43, reaching Grand Slam finals, and returning to his career best rank of No. 3 in the world.
A bunch of Indian players are making news every week, reaching finals and winning titles, especially at the Challenger level.
Indian players have won a dozen Challenger doubles titles this season so far. Yuki Bhambri did one better by winning a Tour event doubles title as well, apart from three Challenger titles, to hint at a bright future in the big league.
Before they rocketed to the top of the world in 1997, winning multiple Tour titles, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi had given a hint of their prowess by winning four Challenger titles as a pair in 1996.
In the current scenario, the Indian players underlined their progress by winning six Challenger titles in six weeks on the trot in Europe.
Sriram Balaji won three of them, with Andre Begemann of Germany. Of course, they were the only doubles titles for Balaji this season, after he had made the ATP Tour final in Pune with Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan, apart from a Challenger final with him.
In that spell of six titles, Niki Poonacha and Divij Sharan won one in Alicante, Spain. Rithvik Bollipalli and Arjun Kadhe won the big Challenger, €145,000 event in Olbia, Italy. Bhambri won one with Julian Cash in Brest, France. Bhambri had won two Challenger titles earlier with Saketh Myneni who took a break from the circuit, after the Asian Games silver medal with Ramkumar Ramanathan, to nurse his new born baby.
Of course, Indian players have been making a lot of finals as well, which overall has helped eight of them to be in the top-110 of world rank.
Anirudh Chandrasekar, Vijay Sundar Prashanth.
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Bopanna (3), Bhambri (62), Sriram Balaji (73), Vijay Sundar Prashanth (83), Anirudh Chandrasekar (87), Nedunchezhiyan (97), Myneni (98), Arjun Kadhe (110) are all capable of climbing further next season.
The superb run is not a surprise as there is a concerted effort, with considerable financial support, to have coaches and physiotherapists travel to tournaments and help the players to be at their competitive best, week after week.
Coach M. Balachandran is a key player in the scheme. It was a very rewarding experience for him when he found himself as part of the champion team for four weeks in a row in Europe.
Balu, as he is affectionately called in the…
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